by Sam Baker
Dob 1978, 1977, 1976.
He threw in 1979 and 1975 for good measure.
Doctors, dieticians, a historian. Directory Enquiries wasn’t much more help. Over two hundred Helen Grahams. Thirty-four in London. Forty in Yorkshire, none anywhere near Wildfell. Even Gil knew landlines were a thing of the past. Lighting another cigarette he tried to think. He needed images. Bookmarking a few HGs that looked possible, he went in search of their pictures. The first, his favourite, was thirty-six years old. Any delight was short-lived. Her Facebook pages proved she couldn’t look less like his Helen Graham if she’d tried.
In under an hour, he learned the private business of thirty-five Helen Grahams in their mid-thirties. Why didn’t these people lock their accounts? They’d be posting bank details next; probably already had, given the drunken party pictures, ecstatic post-birth baby pictures, boyfriends, lovers, husbands and exes laid out for anyone to see. It was a stalker’s paradise. Which was precisely why journalists loved it. Free pictures, free information and you didn’t even need to get anyone’s permission.
He was dismissing Helen Graham number 53 and starting 54 when it dawned on him that the whole world was on Facebook. Eighty per cent of the UK, or so he’d read. Scrolling to the search box, he began to type: ‘K-A-R-E-N M-A-R-K-H-A-M’ and hit return. Far less common name Markham. Nothing. Not one.
The next thought came to him slowly, sickeningly. Surely Jan would have told him … wouldn’t she? He knew the answer to that even before he slid his cursor back to the search box and, with a sinking inevitability, keyed in the letters: ‘K-A-R-E-N K-I-N-N-E-A-R’. Four hits. One in exactly the right bit of London. It was locked.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Slamming his hand on the desk, Gil winced.
Bloody thorns. Bloody idiot.
He pushed the chair back from his desk hard, stood up and sent it spinning across the room into the door. Sod’s bloody law. He couldn’t find Helen Graham but he was pretty sure he’d found his daughter. Just one bloody Facebook search away. Not that there was any way of being sure, since it was a locked account. Was she being a smart girl, her father’s daughter? Although clearly she considered someone else her father now. Or was she trying to keep people out? A particular person, even. Maybe him?
There was only one way to find out.
‘You sad bastard,’ he muttered, as he began to open a Facebook account. But he wheeled his chair forward when he got bored of crouching and kept going. It took him five minutes to open the account and then he spent another twenty trying to work out what would make Karen most likely to accept his friend request. A lot of information or a little? Not that he had much hope of success with either. He gave name, location, birthday and occupation (ex-occupation, though he glossed over that). A pop-up appeared suggesting A Few More People You Might Know And Like To Be Friends With if he knew Karen. Scanning the list only confirmed he didn’t really know Karen at all. He carried that thought through the morning and into the pub at noon.
By chucking-out time his daughter had still not responded to Gil’s Facebook request. Not that he’d expected her to. Just hoped … She was probably at work, wherever that was. He’d long since given up berating himself for not knowing even the most meagre details of her life. He’d asked his ex-wife often enough, but Jan just said that was between him and Karen and refused to get involved. ‘Why won’t you tell me?’ he’d wanted to yell. The one sure-fire way to end the conversation. Then it dawned on him. Her sister would know. How could she not? He wondered why he hadn’t thought to ask before. It was almost three, so Lyn would probably be home, or down the shops, or maybe on her way to pick up her eldest from school.
Who was he kidding?
He didn’t have the faintest clue where she’d be. He didn’t know if she worked part-time or full-time or no-time. For all he knew, she could be on maternity leave. That thought brought him up short. No way would she have had another without telling him. Just before Christmas, that had to be when he’d last spoken to her. Nine months? Ten? A baby was possible … But no, she wouldn’t do that. They got on better than that.
And there’d been birthday cards since.
They just weren’t a clingy sort of family. That was all. Pressing Lyn – home on his mobile, he started walking. Out of town again. This time with one eye firmly on the traffic and a slight limp in his injured knee. Paul, Lyn, Meggie and Alfie are busy right now, said his elder daughter’s voice after three rings on her home number. Leave a message and Alfie will probably push the nice red button to delete it.
Gil smiled, didn’t leave a message.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to forewarn her; but now she’d put that idea in his head about Alfie deleting messages … Well, he’d never know, would he? Scrolling down, he found Lyn – mobile and walked as he waited for the phone to connect. Too far into the Dales and he’d lose his signal. But he had a way to go before that happened. Five beeps, six, seven … More bloody voicemail. He was about to hang up when his daughter’s voice kicked in.
‘Hello? Dad? Hold on, I’m in the car. Give me a sec to pull over.’
Before he could speak he heard himself tossed aside, bounce once on the passenger seat and again, harder, on the floor. Gil winced, as if his own scarred cheek had just hit the ground. ‘Just a sec, sweetheart,’ he heard Lyn say. ‘Mummy needs to talk to Granddad.’
‘Gangdad.’
‘Yes, that’s right. You remember Granddad.’
Except he wouldn’t, couldn’t. Little lad hadn’t seen Gil since he was a baby.
‘Stay put, sweetheart. Mummy won’t be a minute.’
Static crunched in Gil’s ear as she picked him up again. Reaching a gap in the drystone wall, Gil heaved himself over the old stile, finding it noticeably tougher than yesterday, when he’d still been able to bend his knee. Several groups of walkers straggled across the valley in front of him, three or four abreast, swinging those damn ski sticks. Where had they come from all of a sudden? It wasn’t even that sunny.
‘That’s better – I’m parked on the verge. Hang on … no, Alfie, stay in your seat, love, Mummy will be right outside … You OK, Dad?’
‘Yes, fine, why wouldn’t I be?’
A pause, followed by a small intake of breath. ‘We-ell, let’s just say you don’t call every day of the week. You sure you’re OK? Nothing wrong?’
Gil opened his mouth. Pot–kettle, he wanted to say.
He shut it again. He couldn’t very well complain. Retiree with nothing to do objects because his thirty-something daughter with two kids and a job doesn’t call him. ‘Fair dos,’ he said. Then, ‘Well, I’m calling now. From the Dales. You wouldn’t believe the number of walkers. Just thought I’d see how you are. How are the kids?’ He managed to catch himself before he could add, ‘Any more on the way?’
‘We’re good. Meggie’s at school full-time since last week. Alfie’s just started nursery. Mornings only. Godsend. Paul’s busy at work. Me too. Dad …?’
‘Yes?’
‘You sure you’re OK? There’s not anything?’
‘Yes, I said so, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, but … Well, it’s just not like you to call out of the blue, like, for no reason.’
Gil took a deep breath. ‘I thought I might, you know, take you up on your offer. That is if it still stands, of course.’
‘Offer?’ Lyn sounded confused.
‘To take the train over … See the little ones. It was in your Christmas card …’ He was losing his confidence now, wishing he hadn’t called. He hadn’t even got around to asking about Karen yet. Maybe this wasn’t the time.
‘Dad,’ Lyn laughed. ‘That was for Christmas! It’s September!’
‘Christmas soon,’ he said, all too aware of how very pathetic that sounded.
‘Of course you can stay with us. Meggie and Alfie would love it. Any time. Just give me some notice in case Paul’s going to be away.’
Gil wouldn’t mind that. His son-in-law was all right for a s
alesman. It wasn’t like they’d ever really got to know each other. Only met a handful of times in the ten years Paul had been married to his daughter. If anything, he suspected Paul thought of Kevin as his father-in-law.
‘Is that it, Dad? Only I’m on my way to pick Meg up from school and Alfie’s raising merry hell in the back of the car.’
‘There was one other thing …’
‘Y-es.’ Suspicion entered Lyn’s voice.
‘About your sister …’
Silence.
‘I was just thinking. Wondering, if you had an email address.’
‘You know I do and you know I can’t. Karen doesn’t want to hear from you. She knows where to find you. And if she wants to, she will. She was the youngest. She took it hardest. You know she did. Is this the reason you phoned?’
‘No, love, course not. It’s just, if I could speak to her, I’m sure we could sort it out.’
‘Are you? I’d leave her alone if I were you.’ Lyn paused, listening to muffled yells too far from the phone for Gil to make out. ‘Yes, love,’ he heard her say. ‘Mummy’s coming now …
‘Dad,’ she was back. ‘I’ve got to go. If you really mean it about coming to visit, call me later with dates.’
11
It was better this time. In as much as when she emerged from her migraine Helen knew where she was and, for that matter, who she was and when it was. She knew it with such sharp-edged clarity it was shocking.
The house felt better, too. The bits of it she used anyway. Familiar, almost calm. The floorboards and joists had ceased their constant moanings, the scuttlings and scrapings had fallen silent. As if she wasn’t the only one who’d been waiting for the storm to pass.
Helen wandered along the landing on colt-like legs, testing door handles and windows as she passed. Locked. All of them, apart from the one she’d wedged open with a book just before her migraine kicked in. The book was still there, half in/half out, its pages curled where pre-dawn mist had descended. The three-bar fire still blazed. Waving her hand in front of its bars to gauge their heat, Helen grinned. Blazed in the loosest possible sense. Several years earlier she’d trained herself not to turn on gas or electrics when she felt a migraine coming on. Her chances of remembering to turn them off again were minimal. She hadn’t expected yesterday’s to roar in quite so fast. Normally she could predict, gauge their ferocity and closeness. But this attack had taken her completely by surprise.
Picking up the laptop from the upstairs drawing-room floor, she tucked it under her arm and went downstairs. Her legs felt weak, shaky, as if she’d been in bed for days, not hours.
Could she have lost a day, she wondered, checking the front door – still locked – and repeating the exercise with all the downstairs rooms.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
In the kitchen, she found milk neatly returned to its shelf in the fridge, open but fresh. Bread, Marmite, jam, even chocolate. Piling it all on to the oak table next to the laptop, she broke off a square of Galaxy and put it on her tongue, counting slowly down from ten in her head as she let it dissolve while the kettle came to a boil and the laptop cranked itself to life. When it did, she broke off another square, feeling glucose seep into her system.
She flicked on the old Roberts radio she’d tracked down to one of the unused bedrooms, and stopped on the first station she found, surprised to discover it was noon, but at least she hadn’t lost a day. The sky outside made it seem earlier; overcast but not jaundiced, not the yellow that polluted so many migraine hungover days. And the rain had stopped again. For once the lychgate and the woods beyond weren’t obscured by drizzle.
Filling the teapot to the brim, Helen spread a thick layer of jam on hot toast and logged on to the VPN. Her fingers hovered over the icon for her real email. What had Fran’s email said? You called Tom … he asked if you still had the same email address … something like that.
Why Tom, of all people?
One last time, she promised herself, then she wouldn’t look again.
It had been years since she’d last emailed him but she knew the email address by heart, just as she did the phone number. [email protected]. There were three emails that she could see, the first sent two weeks ago.
Licking jam from her fingers, she savoured its sweetness and counted back in her head. Yes, the day after the fire. The day after, if what Fran said was true, Helen had called him.
The email was short and to the point. More like a text.
Helen,
Are you all right? Stupid question, obviously you’re not. I’m worried about you. Call me.
Txxx
She read it over again, hand hovering on the reply arrow. What harm would it do? He knew she was alive anyway and ten to one her sister would tell him she’d called.
Just one line: I’m OK, don’t worry. Thank you. xxx
She ached to do it.
But no. She couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. On either of them.
His second email, sent a week later, was much the same. I’m worried. Call me. Just one kiss this time.
The third had been sent the day before. About an hour after she’d called her sister. ‘Bloody hell, Fran,’ she muttered under her breath.
Helen,
Fran called. She told me about the police. And other things. She doesn’t know what to do. If you’re reading this, you have to call me. Let me help you, Helen. Please.
Tom
Tom. Just Tom.
Helen logged off.
No more Gmail. That was the last time. Someone, somewhere would be able to tell she was opening her email, she was sure of it. It was too risky.
Fran was right. She was good at being alone. Just as well.
Half a loaf of bread, half a bar of chocolate and two pots of tea later the last shadows had lifted. This attack had been different. Shorter, sharper, wreaking havoc with little warning. Moving away as quickly as it had come, like a tropical storm. She hoped it wasn’t going to set a pattern. Too many more like that would finish her, even with her medication. Her eyes skipped over the empty pill packet lying on the worktop and she groaned. There was another problem that hadn’t gone away in the night.
She could sign on at the local surgery, but they’d want a passport or proof of address and she didn’t have one, at least not in a name she was willing to use. Even if they didn’t, and her local infamy was enough, could she persuade an unknown GP to prescribe Clonidine for a simple migraine? They’d want her to see a consultant, have tests. Caroline was her only option; and that meant going to London. It wasn’t the expense that bothered Helen – not that she could really afford it – it was the risk. Helen trusted Caroline, she’d had to over the years, but she had no idea how far medical confidentiality stretched when it came to this.
Back upstairs, Helen dumped yesterday’s clothes, fuggy with the sweat of sleep and the aura of vomit, on her impromptu washing pile on the bathroom floor and slipped into her running kit, point-and-shoot in one pocket, second-hand iPhone in the other. She’d been experimenting; using the phone for still life: half-eaten toast, muddy trainer, dishcloth kicked into a corner.
For years pictures had been the only thing she believed in. To tell a story, to shape the world, to change lives. Take Bill Brandt, or Brassaï’s night photographs of the underbelly of Paris. Or Weegee, so keen to get his crime-scene shots that getting punched was simply part of the job. Famines, migrations, stories of human survival. A part of her envied the old hacks with their press cameras. The photojournalists, drunk on cheap beer, stoned on cheap drugs, and wired on adrenalin and lack of sleep as they brought in the photographs that took America out of the Vietnam War. Pictures made history.
Helen was proof of that. One photograph had given her a career. Another had changed her life irrevocably.
Helen’s pictures had always been of people.
The human cost. Consequences, not conflict. Aftermath.
Big moments in otherwise small lives, or what remained of them
. But now … she wasn’t sure she could ever bear to photograph another face because of what she saw there. Innocence of how the world really was. Apart from those who had the misfortune to know, of course. Seeing that knowledge reflected back was even harder.
Helen was so deep inside her thoughts that she barely noticed when she left the road. She came to halfway across a field, instinctively giving the walkers’ trail a wide berth. Grass squelched beneath her trainers, mud oozing into grooves as she cleared the field. It was dry now, but the air was damp, seeping round her windbreaker and under her sweatshirt. If her hair wasn’t tied down it would be getting bigger by the second. The weather out here on the Dales was deceptive. Light that looked forgiving from behind a kitchen window hid a biting wind that chafed her face as she paced herself up the hill to the Scar, her head full of the faces that had haunted her pictures.
Taking out the iPhone, she switched it on, wondering if she would be able to get a signal on the cheap pay-as-you-go SIM she’d persuaded the shop owner to throw in for the price. Before she started, she dipped into her windbreaker for the scruffy Moleskine she’d taken from her nearly empty photo bag and scrabbled backwards through its pages until she found the number she wanted.
Ms Harris, Caroline Harris the consultant, answered the phone herself.
That was more luck than she deserved.
‘Helen, good to hear from you,’ she said, doing an excellent job of not sounding surprised. She was a busy woman; working both for the NHS and in private practice; appearing in court occasionally as an expert witness. Very busy. ‘How are you?’ Caroline asked. The enquiry was genuine. She’d become, not quite a friend, but almost, over the years; which was why, Helen told herself, she was prepared to risk trusting Caroline now.
‘Been better,’ Helen said truthfully. ‘Been worse. Just come through a migraine.’
Caroline sighed. A sigh Helen knew she was meant to hear. They had an ongoing difference of opinion about whether what happened to Helen in the fugue state could medically be called a migraine. ‘Where are you?’ Caroline asked.